It's infuriating that Nvidia would push a solution that is so tiny for a 50A connector, so poorly located on the top of the card, then only rated for 30 cycles - then fails catastrophically taking the card with it.  All for the low, low price of $1600.  At least engineer a proper adapter with a 90 degree connector.
 
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/right-angle-16-pin-connector-may-save-a-lot-of-rtx-4090-gpus
 

 

 

 
Look how tiny this plug is?  Seriously, did anyone take one look at this and say NOPE?
 
 
 

 
 

frankd3
I'm wondering if it's not mainly the bend but the weight of the 4 8-pin connectors and cables that are forcing pin misalignment.

Any force (from weight or from holding tension in bent springy wires) can hold leveraging pressure on the terminals. The problem seems to be that leveraging pressure causes the GPU's power pin to lever sideways on the connector's terminals, and the split in the folded terminals spreads open. When the split opens, contact pressure drops.

They should use a real terminal that is fully enclosed and/or a backshell.

Let's see a proper terminal suffer the same problem. Example:

ty_ger07

Any force (from weight or from holding tension in bent springy wires) can hold leveraging pressure on the terminals. The problem seems to be that leveraging pressure causes the GPU's power pin to lever sideways on the connector's terminals, and the split in the folded terminals spreads open. When the split opens, contact pressure drops.

They should use a real terminal that is fully enclosed and/or a backshell.

So the individual little connectors would be little metal tubes rather than folded with a split running down the length.
That would solve it. Do those exist or is it something that has to be developed to fit in the existing connector housing?
I'm looking at what Nvidia would be willing to do.

Just a reminder that all EVGA's 3090 Ti's used this 16-pin connector - on the END of the card.  The Kingpin used TWO. 

frankd3

ty_ger07

Any force (from weight or from holding tension in bent springy wires) can hold leveraging pressure on the terminals. The problem seems to be that leveraging pressure causes the GPU's power pin to lever sideways on the connector's terminals, and the split in the folded terminals spreads open. When the split opens, contact pressure drops.

They should use a real terminal that is fully enclosed and/or a backshell.

So the individual little connectors would be little metal tubes rather than folded with a split running down the length.
That would solve it. Do those exist or is it something that has to be developed to fit in the existing connector housing?
I'm looking at what Nvidia would be willing to do.

It's stamped vs. machined contact. 
 
Stamped are used all over the place and are usually reliable if spec'd and implemented properly with correct strain relief and cable dressing.  The mating can be circular or square.  
 
Machined are considerably more expensive and used in somewhat more critical applications, though some can be fairly cheap.  I'm not aware of any common square types, they are usually circular.
 
Providing a proper 90-degree connector with proper strain relief (like the Seasonic pictured above), and much longer pigtail would go a long way in fixing the problem.  Even a straight 12" M-F extension would help.

austin86
Another thought, what about PCI-e slots getting overloaded melting the ATX cable?  Anyone recall this little thing.

 
 
I can't image how hard these cards will be on the PCIe slot when folks start to really OC them. And i they have a older or lower end board...

Completely unrelated in the end.

The supplemental power connection like this is built into the motherboard now, that is the molec or 6 pin PCI cable at the bottom left of most motherboards that are intended for overclocks.

The pci draw issue was apparent when using 3 or 4 GPU’s in SLI, and SLI doesn’t exist, so maybe two GOU’s, but that supplemental PSU connection wouldn’t help with just two GPU’s pulling at or under the 75w PCI slot rating. Pulling 150w across two pci slots wasn’t bad, pulled 225w or 300w across three or four pci slots respectively.

No matter how far people OC these 4090’s, they should never be able to pull 225w off the PCI, which is where the issues started, and they will likely never see 150w at the bracket, although I don’t think we have a way to measure the PCI bracket power draw outside of software or someone jamming probes into the 24pin or supplemental 6 pin.

the_Scarlet_one


Completely unrelated in the end.

The supplemental power connection like this is built into the motherboard now, that is the molec or 6 pin PCI cable at the bottom left of most motherboards that are intended for overclocks.

The pci draw issue was apparent when using 3 or 4 GPU’s in SLI, and SLI doesn’t exist, so maybe two GOU’s, but that supplemental PSU connection wouldn’t help with just two GPU’s pulling at or under the 75w PCI slot rating. Pulling 150w across two pci slots wasn’t bad, pulled 225w or 300w across three or four pci slots respectively.

No matter how far people OC these 4090’s, they should never be able to pull 225w off the PCI, which is where the issues started, and they will likely never see 150w at the bracket, although I don’t think we have a way to measure the PCI bracket power draw outside of software or someone jamming probes into the 24pin or supplemental 6 pin.

Not all new boards have the supplemental power built into them. You only get that on the majority premium level boards. 400 bucks and and under mostly not so much.

kevinc313
So Jay cut open one of these adapters, it's actually quite well built:
 
https://youtu.be/_z58lEnnX1k?t=1034
 
That doesn't excuse the connector hitting upwards of 60C in free air, without the FE card exhausting on it, which is actually kind of insane.  AIB cards have their heatsinks dumping air right on this connector, so I'd image in a case it could easily hit 80C-100C.

 
So did der8auer on launch day... irony is two of the four sense pins aren't even wired to anything in NVIDIA's official adapter. 
 

808sting
The CableMod cable is a straight plug, right?  Was looking at the right angle adapter if I ever get a 4090.  Would be curious to run Furmark and shoot a FLIR at the CableMod options.

 
CableMod sells a solid right-angle version. https://store.cablemod.com/cablemod-12vhpwr-right-angle-adapter/
 

Card number five https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/yeb9e7/i_think_my_asus_4090_tuf_oc_adapter_is_melting_too/
 
Tally is now three ASUS TUF Gamings, one Gigabyte Gaming OC, and one unknown from a Cyberpower prebuilt. 

donta1979
The horror has a face - NVIDIA’s hot 12VHPWR adapter for the GeForce RTX 4090 with a built-in breaking point | igor'sLAB (igorslab.de)

That is even beyond the obvious shortcomings of this connector lol. I didn't realize they were making a little stamped adaptor that they solder into the sockets. Based on the posts with the be quiet! cables, which are actually built in about as ideal a situation as possible (one wire per crimp socket), they still can have issues with the sockets ripping out. To be fair, this is not a new issue and was possible on the older 6-8 pin connectors, but the sockets are smaller on these and the little tabs that hold them into the plastic housings are smaller, and the little plastic ledges that hold those tabs are smaller, so when you factor in the manufacturing tolerances on the stamped socket contacts as well as the molded plastic parts, every now and then you get one that just doesn't want to seat right. The stiffer the wires, the more you bend them, the more strain is put on those little tabs.
 
Every now and then, one is going to pop back out, especially when you have 12 stiff wires going into the connector over a distance. You route the cable around corners in your case for example, and you've now put extra strain on some of the contacts because the wire has to try and travel farther on the outside of the bend than the ones on the inside of the bend. This is just a known risk factor in connectors made this cheaply. Even knowing that, people still use them. We use the larger version (which is basically identical to the 6-8 pin ones on all the non 4090/3090ti GPUs out there) where I work. We use 8-20 pin versions of it regularly and every once in a while we get a crappy socket that pops back out of the connector when we're trying to make the cable. We just cut the wire as close as we can and crimp a new socket on. It typically works fine, but we also put them in applications with very little cable-stress, we adequately strain-relief the cables, and they get installed once...ever...so there's no concern about how many insertions. Also, our usage is very low volume so it's easy for us to inspect all of them thoroughly.

What I think is mad about this (before I saw the crappy soldering on the flimsy little plate adaptor that bonds 6 sockets in one of the Nvidia adaptor cables), is that they're mass-producing these things in an application where every single user is going to bend the cables to get them to fit in the case somehow (and yes, bending the cable even away from the connector can cause strain on the little tabs that hold the sockets in).
 
So in summary, you have a connector that can have an issue if you crank on the connector because you'll get crappy contact between the pin and socket due to the stamped two part socket spreading. If you strain the wires too much, you can pull a socket right out of the connector or at least dislodge it enough that you get crappy contact. And then Nvidia decided to solder a bunch of wires to a flimsy little plate that is holding 6 of these sockets together, jams it into the connector, then pots it in plastic to try and hide the mess and hold it all together that is also susceptible to bending issues. Well done.

Nobody could have expected Nvidia's cable would be so poorly made. I also expected it to be like the_Scarlet_one's dissection of the EVGA cable.
 
Any body who does not have a PSU included cable should immediately get one from Cable Mod or similar company.
 
This shows how they combine the cables to end up with one wire to each power pin on the 12vhpwr connector rather then trying to combine them at the connector.
It's my 3090 Ti cable but it shows how they combine the 8 pin connectors.
Plus it looks a hell of a lot better.

 

Nereus
 
Not good. It may be that EVGA dodged a bullet here... depends how commonplace this issue becomes.
 

Sell me your 3080ti for cheap🙃

People can argue and talk about the issues but clearly is whose fault? Nvidia, obviously🙄 so dont be blaming the power supplies companies for the fails of having a 4090.😼
They can rearrange the power connectors 🤔

I have the 3 8-pin to 12-pin connector that I showed above for my 3090 Ti. In benchmarking I can hit 505W and the connector is barely warm.
 
I'm starting to believe that although the connector should have been beefier it looks like, so far, that the connector is not the current problem with current power draws.
 

bzabrown419
Will the EVGA PerFE 12 cable sold for use on the 3090ti work with the 40 series cards? Seems that this cable although only 12pin to 2x8pin is still capable of supporting 600w. Can anyone confirm or deny if this is an option?

No, it won’t work.

This could be a huge liability for Nvidia and the AIBs. They need to make a public announcement with a fix pronto or recall those adapters and provide free ones to owners and all new buyers of the card.
 
Also as others have said, EVGA can make a killing (at least for those with EVGA PSUs) with properly designed and braided 16-pin to 4x 8-pin adapter cables for the 4090.
 
I still have not been able to purchase a 4090 (since I'm only getting an FE and Strix) and so the delay may be serendipitous.